TRANSCRIPT
WOMAN 1: "You try to feel a little bit - try to make yourself invisible generally, I've noticed myself doing. I go quiet, I try to get away, walk faster, I sometimes will try and find an alternate way to get where I'm going to try just to avoid people I'm a little more wary of."
WOMAN 2: "Yeah I feel safe, it's all about our own confidence."
WOMAN 3: "There's precautions that I take, like I wouldn't... I love walking along the creek in the daytime but I wouldn't go walk along the Merri Creek after dark."
WOMAN 4: "I don't feel unsafe, but I don't feel safe enough."
These are the kinds of experiences and views being collected by YourGround New South Wales.
The interactive, crowd-sourced map invites women and gender diverse people to pin a spot and share their experiences about safety in public spaces.
Contributors can anonymously pin a place as "safe" or "unsafe".
More than 1,000 submissions have been collected since November, and so far they show almost three quarters of spots were pinned as "unsafe".
Parks and open spaces like beaches had the most safe pins, while car parks were ranked the most unsafe.
"Crowd-sourcing as a methodology for gathering data and information is important in terms of engaging with women and gender-diverse people because it allows them to share information in their own way, when they want to, and in a way that's appropriate. They can also go onto the map to see what's happening in the spaces and places that they're moving through and occupying in the cities, so there's a sense of activism and a collective shared dataset that emerges from this research."
That's Dr Nicole Kalms, the Director of the XYX Lab at Monash University, which explores the intersection between gender, identity, urban space and advocacy.
The project has grown out of a collaboration between the XYX Lab and digital consultancy CrowdSpot, and a partnership with the New South Wales Safety Commissioner Hannah Tonkin and Transport New South Wales.
It also receives funding from the New South Wales government's 30 million dollar Safer Cities Program.
Dr Kalms says what we know about gender and public safety usually comes from crime statistics or census data.
YourGround, on the other hand, builds a picture of how people actually experience public space whether or not a crime is reported.
"There's actually just really pragmatic issues, like what is it that women and gender-diverse people are doing in their day-to-day, moving through and into cities, that they're changing so that they can feel safer. And for some people that may mean using their car more often, it might mean tracking the trains or the public transport, it might mean calling friend. So it's kind of these things - I would be interested to understand what their workarounds are."
She says the main activity marked by users on the map is "passing through".
"And while this might seem quite minor, it's actually really significant, because what it means is they're not hanging out in spaces and they're not having the authority just to be in spaces, for the sake of using them. And so if women and gender diverse people are constantly moving through, constantly passing through, well that tells us something about their experience and it also changes the experience for other women as well, because there's not a sense of authority to be in public spaces. We know that when we have the presence of other women and other gender-diverse people, across generations, across different ethnicities and cultures, this really creates a sense of public safety. So being able to understand that condition is really important to this research."
Karen Bevan, who is the CEO of Full Stop Australia, commends YourGround and the New South Wales Women's Safety Commissioner for centring ordinary people's experiences.
Her organisation previously worked with the City of Melbourne and Victoria Police on a program called Project Night Justice.
It aimed to curb sexual violence, with the slogan "everyone has the right to enjoy Melbourne after dark".
"What people think safety is and what safety is lived, is quite different. And there's a lot of evidence in the literature about the way that architecture, public spaces, and other environments have been designed with men at the centre: designed by men, for men, and that's not the experience that women and people who are gender diverse bring to this, and and we need to actually really amplify those voices."
She says it's important to get venue owners, councils, and everyday people on board and to create a shared sense of responsibility for what happens in public spaces.
So far, YourGround has found that being out after dark is a significant concern for people contributing to the map.
Ms Bevan warns there's a "real complexity" to addressing safety at night.
"But anyone who thinks it's just about increased CCTV or increased lighting alone is probably not really living in the real world of the the fact that a lot of risk attaches to the attitudes and behaviours that get condoned and what's accepted, well beyond those dark streets."
Ms Bevan says its crucial to understand and address hostile cultural factors.
That may mean sexist behaviour intersecting with racism, homophobia, and judgmental or stigmatising attitudes about how people look or if they've been drinking alcohol.
"Aboriginal women have told us over and over again about their sense of lack of safety and the types of racist behaviour they experience in licensed venues, from other patrons, and others on the street."
It also helps to explain why, while empty spaces may feel unsafe for many women and gender diverse women, for some it's crowded spaces that pose the greatest risk - any time of day.
"The Islamophobia Register makes it very clear that, for example, Muslim women have shared their experience of public safety extensively. And their experience, for example, shows that they are experiencing racism quite directly in the street, and it doesn't need to be nighttime for that to happen. It shows that verbal abuse is a serious issue for Muslim women. And so that community has already told us a lot of what we need to know about what's going on in the streets for women in the community, and we should be listening to that."
The diverse and intersecting experiences of women and gender diverse people are also front of mind for Dr Nicole Kalms.
She says YourGround resources have been translated into Arabic, Korean, Thai, Vietnamese and simplified and traditional Chinese, alongside the map's Q-R code.
"And what we hope is that then provides information about how to access the map online. The map itself is quite straightforward. Our website also indicates how you can set up a translator so we can actually make sure we're gathering information from anybody who wants to share their information."
Submissions to YourGround New South Wales close on 8 February.
The report will be released mid-year and available to the public, with those involved hoping it will help shape policies that make the city safer for everyone.
If you or someone you know wants to talk about family or domestic violence, call 1800RESPECT on 1800 737 732 or call Lifeline on 13 11 14. In an emergency, call 000.
